Monday, March 29, 2010

America's Report Card, by John McNally

Another seriously cynical and funny book by John McNally. Iowa City alternates as a kind of a black hole/paradise in his books, it seems. This one has recent college graduates and lovers Charlie and Petra take low-wage jobs ("just for the summer") scoring National Test Center essays, but when Charlie begins to feel that more is being tested than students' ability to write a coherent sentence, his life goes off the rails. Wild subplots and great characters, including Jainey, an 18 year old green-haired cartoonist who keeps her dead art teacher's Osama Bin Laden/George Bush statue in her room, kept me eating this up. Strange flavor, but powerful good.

What is this?

This is a log of what books I've been reading and movies I've been watching.Comments are welcome!

One explanation seems necessary - the phrase "Life-Changing Fiction" is not in any way an endorsement of those books- in fact, I think those books are Awful, and want that to be clear. "Life-Changing Fiction", as a phrase, has been trademarked, absurdly, by the "Christian fiction" writer Karen Kingsbury, and that is Just Not Right.Aside from being ridiculous, it just sheds light on the hypocrisy of the writer.What would Jesus copyright?